For the 16th edition of Rare Disease Day, over 100 countries and regions joined their voices, organizing more than 800 different kinds of events all around the world.

This year’s campaign saw 3 new National Alliance partners: Israel, Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania!
Buildings including the magnificent Tokyo Tower were illuminated for this year’s global chain of lights in support of Rare Disease Day raising awareness for people living with a rare disease, and spreading hope and color all around the world.

The 2023 official video was available in 48 different languages.

Media Coverage

Rare Disease Day continues to grow worldwide and in 2023 there were over 800 events marking Rare Disease Day 2023. Participants were invited to ‘Light up for Rare’ and spread the message; ‘Share your colours’.

Social Media highlight

Rare Disease Day 2023 started off with a successful webinar introducing all the resources aimed at providing useful material to support the campaign. This was replayed 1,366 times. Resources were translated into a number of languages. The Key Statistics and Infographic cards in 6 languages, the Virtual backgrounds into 44 languages and the Official Video into 48.

The Rare Disease Day Facebook page reached over 10 million people while the Instagram page reached over 3 million.

69% of young people who knew about the #RareDiseaseDay challenge got engaged posting reels over the 28 days.